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    Door locks and Hue colors don't work?

    Just switched from SmartThings but having some issues. With SmartThings I could say "Alexa, make the living room huge dark purple" or "Alexa, is the front door locked? Alexa, lock the front door." but none of these seem to work with HomeSeer, she just says sorry I can't help with that or something. Any ideas?

    Saw other people say "Alexa, tell HomeSeer to lock the front door" but that doesn't work either, it's always blue light spins for 5-10 secs then "That command was not found on the device." Even "Alexa, tell HomeSeer to turn on the kitchen light" it's "That command was not found on the device." But "Alexa, turn on the Kitchen Light" works fine.

    Even "Alexa, what is the thermostat set to?" never works, or "Alexa, what's the temperature in the kitchen?", she says "It doesn't look like that device supports that yet." So I'm confused, this all worked in SmartThings but seems like nothing works well here.

    #2
    Originally posted by 416to305 View Post
    Just switched from SmartThings but having some issues. With SmartThings I could say "Alexa, make the living room huge dark purple" or "Alexa, is the front door locked? Alexa, lock the front door." but none of these seem to work with HomeSeer, she just says sorry I can't help with that or something. Any ideas?

    Saw other people say "Alexa, tell HomeSeer to lock the front door" but that doesn't work either, it's always blue light spins for 5-10 secs then "That command was not found on the device." Even "Alexa, tell HomeSeer to turn on the kitchen light" it's "That command was not found on the device." But "Alexa, turn on the Kitchen Light" works fine.
    For your locks, "tell Homeseer to lock the front door" should work.

    1. In the device listing, make sure that the child object is named whatever it is you are asking Alexa to control. For instance, each of my locks is actually five devices in Homeseer. The root device is not the one being controlled, it's the one that shows the Lock and Unlock buttons on the device listing.

    2. Is the Voice Command box checked in the properties for that child device?

    Not sure why HS hasn't updated their api skill so that locks can be controlled. For my Hue lights I just ended up using the Hue app connected to Alexa instead of trying to control them using any of the Hue plugins. My experience with them was not very good and the Hue app just works. I do however, update their status in HS using IFTTT (and change color that way as well)

    For my Z-wave color changing bulbs I also use IFTTT. Using the phrase "Alexa, trigger living room purple" isn't as natural as I would like but for the time being it works. Unfortunately it also means that my wife and kids don't use any of the color changing abilities

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      #3
      I agree, HS needs to work on door locks got the Alexa Smart Home API. The Alexa Homeseer Skill works correctly.

      In my case I currently have a virtual device called dog door, as soon as the switch arrives it will be a physical device, and the way you lock and unlock the door is to turn the power on and off. However, so it sounds natural you don't want to say on and off but unlocked and locked.

      Any, here is how I set everything up along with what works and what doesn't work for the two methods.

      First let's look at Method #2 aka the Alexa Homeseer Skill. This method was tried with both of the following settings.

      OR


      With these settings if you issue the following commands:
      • Alexa, ask homeseer to unlock the dog door.
      • Alexa, ask homeseer to lock the dog door.
      Everything works just as you would expect.

      If you use the following commands
      • Alexa, ask homeseer to Turn on the dog door.
      • Alexa, ask homeseer to Turn off the dog door.

      You'll get the response "That command is not found on the device.". So we know that when using method #2 it will always use the Status field not the Control Use field.

      Now we'll look at method #1, theAlexa Smart Home commands.

      Using the following settings and commands:

      • Alexa, Unlock the dog door.
      • Alexa, Lock the dog door.
      Fails with the response "Sorry I didn't find Dog Door". In fact you'll find that the dog door is no longer detected in the list of devices on the Alexa app.

      Now lets change the settings to the following and try some commands.

      • Alexa, Unlock the dog door.
      • Alexa, Lock the dog door.
      This doesn't work and returns the response "Dog Door doesn't support that". However, in this case the dog door is in the list of devices on the Alexa app.

      If however if you use the following commands.
      • Alexa, Turn on the dog door.
      • Alexa, Turn off the dog door.
      The function works but using on/off on and off for a lock doesn't seem to be correct way to do it.

      We can see that method 31 uses the "Control use:" section and not the status text.

      Here are the issues I see.
      • The two methods use different ways to command the device. I think both methods should use the same but I can see both sides.
      • Now we could live with that if setting the "Device use:" didn't cause the switch to be ignored when using method 1.
      • Currently no way to use lock and unlock in method #1.
      • Both method MUST be able to use the same commands. We can't have one accepting on and off and the other unlock and lock as that's just way too confusing.


      One question I have is which does the Homeseer built-in VR use? I don't have access to a speaker client so I have no way to tell unless someone posts it.

      I don't know who is at fault at this point although since the Alexa Smart Home says it supports the lock and unlock commands I suspect that it's the Homeseer Smart Home function. Hopefully HomeSeer will fix this is short order.
      HomeSeer Version: HS3 Standard Edition 3.0.0.548
      Linux version: Linux auto 4.15.0-72-generic #81-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 26 12:20:02 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
      Number of Devices: 484 | Number of Events: 776

      Enabled Plug-Ins: 3.0.0.13: AirplaySpeak | 2.0.61.0: BLBackup
      3.0.0.70: EasyTrigger | 1.3.7006.42100: LiftMaster MyQ
      4.2.3.0: mcsMQTT | 3.0.0.53: PHLocation2 | 0.0.0.47: Pushover 3P
      3.0.0.16: RaspberryIO | 3.0.1.262: Z-Wave

      Z-Net version: 1.0.23 for Inclusion Nodes
      SmartStick+: 6.04 (ZDK 6.81.3) on Server

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